Running the business
What to do when you lose your phone and your invoices are on it
If you exported a backup you restore it in two minutes. If you did not, the records are gone — which is why the export exists.
This is the honest trade-off of an app that keeps your data on the device and nowhere else. Nobody can read your invoices, and nobody can recover them for you either. There is no "contact support and they'll restore it".
The mitigation takes seconds: Settings, Export backup, send the file to yourself. Do it monthly and the worst case becomes an inconvenience.
Your issued PDFs are a second line of defence — if you emailed or WhatsApped them, copies exist in those threads.
First, what is actually lost
If you had a backup file, nothing is lost — install the app on a replacement, restore, and you are where you were. Moving your invoices to a new phone is the same procedure.
If there was no backup, the records held only in the app are gone. There is no server copy to recover from, and no support ticket that changes that. It is the direct cost of the thing that also means no company holds your client list.
What survives outside the app
More than people expect, because invoices are documents that get sent. Work through these in order:
- Sent PDFs. Every invoice you emailed is in your sent folder. Every one you sent by message is in that thread. This is usually the single largest recovery.
- Bank statements. Twelve months of statements give you every payment received, with dates and payer names. That reconstructs your income even where the document is gone.
- Your clients. For anything unpaid, the client has the invoice. Asking them to forward the copy you sent is unremarkable and they will not think less of you for it.
- Cloud photo backups. If you photograph job sheets or receipts, those are often backed up automatically even when app data is not.
Rebuilding in a defensible order
Do not try to recreate everything. Prioritise by what has consequences.
- Unpaid invoices first. This is money you are owed and the only category with a deadline. Recover the PDFs, note what is outstanding, and carry on chasing.
- The current tax period. Whatever your next return covers, reconstruct from statements plus sent PDFs.
- Client contact details. Mostly recoverable from your phone contacts and email.
- Historic paid invoices. Last, and often partially. Bank statements plus sent mail give you enough for a tax record even where you cannot regenerate the document.
Tell your accountant early
A gap in records that you disclose and reconstruct is an administrative problem. The same gap discovered later looks different. Most tax authorities accept reasonable reconstruction from bank records where the primary documents are genuinely lost, and the reasonable part is doing it promptly and consistently. How long to keep invoice records covers the retention rules you are working against.
Set it up so it cannot happen twice
One export, stored off the phone, and a trigger that makes you do it again. The first of the month works because you are already thinking about money. Keep the last three files rather than overwriting one, so a corrupt or mistimed export is not your only copy.
It is worth being blunt about the arithmetic: a backup takes under a minute, and this page exists because not taking that minute costs people weeks. If you only do one thing after reading this, do the export now.
What about a stolen phone rather than a lost one
Different problem, and slightly better news. Because the data never left the device, there is no account for a thief to access and no password of yours in circulation. Remote-wipe the handset through your platform's find-my-device service, restore your backup to the replacement, and the exposure ends there. If you have a device passcode — and you should — the practical risk to your client list is low.
EstimateBill does this on your phone with no account and no internet — the invoice is built, the PDF is made and the record is kept entirely on the device. See how it works, or build one in your browser first.